Hot In press | Review | Anthony Collins – Exhibit A | ✰✰✰✰

Such is the speed at which new labels crop up these days that some are sprouting fresh offshoots before properly taking root themselves. Case in point, Francis Harris and Anthony Collins’ Scissor & Thread, which only launched mid-2011, but has already spawned a subsidiary label in Natural History. Time will tell whether this becomes Collins’ main creative outlet, but for now at least he seems to have created the perfect niche for his talents.

Everything about Exhibit A feels as if it’s been sitting in the sun for a long time. The colours are drained and pale, the sharp edges softened and the canvas cracked and curled. It’s lethargic, but not drainingly so, and each track has more than enough groove to reach the requisite level of energy to work on the floor. Raw hats sharply sit proudly astride doughy basslines with the monochrome landscape occasionally punctuated by the occasional incandescent flash.

Exhibit A‘s triumph is that it buries so much feeling in what is a relatively straightforward exercise in deep house. The way that Collins allows the separate parts to bleed willingly into one another is entrancing, and by the time you’ve got to « Ransom »—undoubtedly the EP’s highlight—your heart already belongs to him.